He is a practising consultant paediatric oncologist/neuro-oncologist at Princess Margaret Hospital for Children (Perth) and Head of the Brain Tumour Program at the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research (Perth).

He is an invited member of the Children’s Oncology Group (COG), a large international clinical trial cooperative group based in the United States. He is also a board member of Australian Children’s Cancer Trials (ACCT), which is a subgroup of the Australian and New Zealand Children’s Haematology/Oncology Group (ANZCHOG), Australia’s leading body for children’s cancer research, education and advocacy.

Dr Gottardo and his team carry out research on several types of childhood cancer:

ependymoma

medulloblastoma

pineoblastoma

paediatric high-grade glioma.

Other BCDC members also focus on paediatric brain tumours as part of their research. Professor Terry Johns and his team (MIMR-PHI Institute of Medical Research and Monash University, Melbourne) study diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma, which has a peak incidence at age 6 to 7.

A/Prof Geraldine O’Neill and her team (Children’s Hospital at Westmead, Sydney) study how tumour cells invade normal tissue, which is applicable to all tumour types. She is a principal investigator with the Childhood Cancer Cytoskeleton Consortium (KCP-C4), a national team of researchers with expertise in targeting the cytoskeleton for generating diagnostics and therapeutics for paediatric tumours.